Thanks for posting, P_S
Someone else's contribution here is very welcome, because I hadn't intended this thread to be a monologue.
Hunky Dory is by a long lead my favourite Bowie album, so I was interested to hear about a connection to Crime and Punishment. I read that book years ago, though struggled a bit to finish it as I recall. What a pity for this thread that Dostoevsky never mentions David Bowie !
I love the singing and style of Quicksand, though to me the lyrics have always been a puzzle - slightly clearer now that you mention Bowie's übermensch inspiration. And on the topic of those lyrics, about a year ago, I finally worked out what this line was about
:-
If I don't explain what you need to know, you can tell me all about it on the next Bardo
On the original album-insert lyric sheet, that "Bardo" is spelt with a capital, which made me assume it was a misprint for (Brigitte) Bardot and was just one more inexplicable line from Bowie. Turns out, though, that "bardo" is a buddhist term for the period between one incarnation and the next, so Bowie was sailing right over my head with my schoolboy's conjecture about this legendary beauty:-
Well, my apologies if you knew that already, and sure, any loose links between books and music would be welcome here.